


here i am, leaving you clues

by Lvslie



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is recalled to Heaven, Aziraphale's Varying Stages of Denial, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I am SO sorry for constantly messing with this story and re-updating it, I do hope this is the Last One, Idiots in Love, Longing, M/M, Mutual Pining, and dithers a lot, it doesn’t let me sleep and I keep reworking it constantly in tiny ways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-02-08 12:18:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12864372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lvslie/pseuds/Lvslie
Summary: It’s all the same burning bookshop, and I’m always inside shouting your name.[Aziraphale is recalled to Heaven, but leaving proves more difficult than anticipated. Written for the tumblr prompt: ‘Actually....I just miss you.’]





	1. Aziraphale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maniacalmole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maniacalmole/gifts).



> This was written for the lovely @maniacalmole's great prompt on Tumblr – and I'm so sorry this took so long, I wanted to get it just right and then life snuck up on me out of the blue. But here it is – I hope it was worth the wait!
> 
> [Update: now with little fixes/adjustments; i hope it reads better!]

 

_Here I am_

_leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome_

_burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,_

_my silent night, just mash your lips against me._

_We are all going forward. None of us are going back._

_—_ Richard Siken _, Snow and Dirty Rain_

 

As a rule, Aziraphale doesn’t tend to think too much about things that escape the label of his strict interest. By default, he finds them either entirely inconsequential (modern music of all sort, the fashion industry and Gabriel’s newly devised pow-wow system of monthly self-evaluation, _because in all honesty, what is there so important to communicate that cannot be communicated through a peacefully written report?_ ) or equally daunting (fast driving, _salmiakki_ and over-eager shop customers, or to be honest, _any_ shop customers)—and thus unworthy of attention.

But this reasonable approach has a tendency of going belly up and turning inconspicuously into varyingly progressed denial. Aziraphale is more or less aware of it, and _more_ than _less_ set upon ignoring it.

He has been avoiding the envelope for an entire week, having perched it inconspicuously atop his cluttered desk—but the wretched thing seems to spy on his every movement as he shuffles about the bookshop and stirs his camomile tea.

(Which isn’t nearly as ridiculous a thought as it may sound, given the authors of the envelope’s content.)

The problem hides in the inscription written in perfect calligraphy on its back:

 

_Aziraphale, Principality, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, Agent on Earth: Initial Recall Arrangements._

 

It is, to put it mildly, a vastly bothersome inscription.

The envelope is almost discovered among Aziraphale’s piled up inanimate company one evening, by someone half-tipsy and loitering amiably in the angel’s study, as he tends to be. 

Aziraphale stuffs the thing in his most nether drawer after that, somewhere firmly between the fake accountancy files, and manoeuvres the feebly-protesting Crowley into the kitchen.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it doesn’t much help.

 

...

 

They are sitting on a bench in St. James. It’s a wondrously mundane morning: pleasantly yellowing trees, messy background noises exhaled by the city, a slither of lazy Autumn-scented wind—and the sun, _just a bit too bright_ to be having this sort of conversation.

Aziraphale links his fingers together on top of his book, feeling uncannily fidgety.

‘As I said,’ he says cautiously, ‘I _have_ given it much thought, and eventually … Well—eventually, I said … well, _naturally_ , I said yes. Well, I say naturally, seeing as the whole thing wasn’t exactly a question, you understand, more of a … of a chance to go willingly. As opposed to a later chance to … go _unwillingly_ , if you will.’

There’s a tiny pause: some bird shrieks in close distance. A gust of the sneaky wind flutters up with a hiss. Aziraphale adjusts his scarf and trench coat conscientiously, trying not to glance sideways in a manner exceedingly obvious. 

‘Oh,’ says his companion. His voice is politely listless, ‘Well, who would’ve thought.’

And he says nothing more.

At times, old times, Aziraphale has thought that Crowley must have been shaped from different particles from the rest of the world: a focused concentration of some dark and trembling matter, an accidental bloom of anxiety. Not anything vile, no. Nothing inherently _vile_ could have this much of a ruffled bird’s impression to itself.

Like right now: looking ahead, with such an unfathomable expression—especially from Aziraphale’s hardly strategic angle. _I could have planned this better_ , the angel thinks sheepishly: the intended soothing familiarity of the setting makes a tremendously poor substitute for a good judge of Crowley’s reaction. The angel narrows his eyes a little: the sun is _very_ bright today. Slightly _too_ bright, everything becomes almost too sharp to directly look at.

The wind makes the coiffed tips of Crowley’s hair twitch over his forehead as he speaks at last. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

Crowley—that is, Aziraphale’s private living contradiction, his little hushed-up heresy. Wearing an expensive-looking dark scarf tied neatly around his neck, and sleek sunglasses. Sitting with his arms crossed, gazing directly ahead. Looking somewhat as if he’s part of some inconspicuously shot feature film, _unnervingly_ picturesque.

Something in Aziraphale’s stomach tightens. ‘Oh. Well. I guess I just wanted to … do this right. What I mean is—’

He trails off. Crowley very pointedly doesn’t offer any sort of help.

‘After all these years,’ Aziraphale finally picks up, uncomfortably. ‘I thought you might—’

‘… have something to say in the matter?’ Crowley asks, a notch waspishly. He cracks a wry smile. ‘Am I standing in the way of your career, Aziraphale? _Should_ I? Maybe I’ll get myself an apron or something, start greeting you along the lines of _what sort of time do you call this_ —’

‘Oh, stop this,’ Aziraphale says, with feeling. Admittedly, he may be trying not to mirror the smile, but he’s not going to let _that_ show. ‘There’s no need to poke fun, my dear. This is no laughing matter.’

‘Wrong, there’s _always_ need for that,’ Crowley immediately counters. ‘Poking fun, I mean. _Especially_ at you.’

The way he speaks is artfully careless, even a little defiant— _obviously_. But there it is again, Aziraphale can’t help noticing: that anxious energy, swarming back in a dizzying tide. Crowley’s left leg twitches, he moves marginally away on the bench, inhales sharply.

Not for the first time in his life, Aziraphale wishes he could see his eyes.

‘Truthfully, there’s not much we can _do_ now, down here, or is there?’ he says—and instantly cringes at the word choice. ‘Er, professionally, I mean.’

Crowley manages a nervous chuckle.

Aziraphale tries in vain to name it differently, like for example a _nasty laugh_ , or a malicious … malicious snicker. But, no. It’s a _nervous chuckle_ , and now Crowley is getting up, stretching tall on his spindly legs, shoulders tugged forward, wearing a slight wince.

‘One thing,’ he says curtly, not looking at Aziraphale at all, ‘don’t you dare shake my hand goodbye. Got it?’ 

This well-known tone: harsh, irritable. And still, something underneath that Aziraphale dares not interpret. Something raw and buried and familiar, that he has spent _ages_ trying not to hear.

‘As you wish,’ he replies stiffly.

Crowley nods and stalks away, cutting out in the suddenly blinding sunlight, thin and sparse like a wisp of smoke. 

For a moment, Aziraphale feels unbearably disheartened: too weary with everything around him to proceed. 

Then he dusts off his book with a sigh and returns to reading. His algorithm of limited thinking might be faulty, but anything that has a fault, also has a complimentary justification in the Ineffable Plan. Or at least Aziraphale _thinks_ that’s so. 

Small steps. He will think about the consequences of this conversation in due time.

 

 ...

 

 _Due time_ becomes increasingly worrying as it fails to manifest itself. Aziraphale doesn’t acknowledge the problem until he finds himself actually _dusting off the backlot_ —and even then, the unpleasant train of thought is glibly diverted by a minor affair with an ill-translated 13th century manuscript.   

And so it’s two full heavy quiet days before Crowley falls into the bookshop with a gust of bright September wind, in a high-collared coat, with a lopsided smile. Something inside Aziraphale tugs urgently, briefly, at the sight; something entirely too much like sheer relief, and he dutifully smothers it down.

‘May I help you?’ he asks primly, because keeping safe distance is always a better idea than the disastrous act of potential honesty, which he simply doesn’t _intend_ to consider. 

‘So when’s the big day, eh?’ Crowley retorts unceremoniously, spoiling the effect. He walks up to the counter and looms over it—always slightly taller, slightly darker and sharper than his surroundings.  There is nothing that can be read from his voice, as in the millions of versions of this conversation that they have had or could have had through the years.

But Aziraphale is familiar with the general idea _hoping for a sign_. He knows the exact mechanism of this particular delusion: one isn’t a principality for six millennia without catching up on a thing or two.

He opens his mouth, considers saying something evasive, surrenders.

‘Friday,’ he says, heaving a small sigh. ‘Or, er—ish. You know Heaven. They always take their sweet time with forma—’

‘I actually _don’t_ ,’ Crowley interrupts him casually, brightly, startling Aziraphale as he drums his long fingers on the counter. ‘Not recently, anyway.’

Some vaguely bashful and unspecified thought bubbles up inside Aziraphale. Ungainly, he begins, ‘Crowley—’

‘I mean, if you thought,’ Crowley cuts in again, voice growing bolder, ‘that I was gonna make it nice and easy for you, then you _thought wrong_.’

He studies some invisible speck on the cufflink of his shirt. ‘I could’ve done with a fair warning, yeah? But alright. If you’re going up there—’

‘To Heaven,’ Aziraphale specifies unnecessarily, uneasy with the odd feeling that has settled in his stomach. ‘ _Up there_ just sounds like some … some peculiar mental state, and I don’t—’ 

‘—yeah, whatever, if you’re going _up there_ in three days, then it’s still three damn days down here that you can spend being miserable with me.’ 

‘My _dear_ ,’ Aziraphale begins, reproachfully.

‘No, I mean it,’ Crowley says, straightening up. ‘For old times’ sake, or … or whatever. Cause I’m not gonna see you off to the proverbial train station, if that’s what you’ve been hoping. All I can offer is … well, _this_.’ He gestures vaguely—at himself, or at the bookshop, Aziraphale isn’t sure. He isn’t sure if that makes a difference.

‘A tour down the memory lane, if you will. Summary of our merry time in this little hellhole. Earth-hole. Or I can—er, you know, go away and keep doing the obligatory sulking. Up to you.’

Crowley makes a face, and unnervingly familiar one, and drums his fingers again.

For a moment, Aziraphale finds himself at a loss. Then he sighs in defeat, ‘You’re impossible.’

‘That,’ Crowley says, brightening suddenly, ‘is something I _am_ willing to live with. We have a deal, then. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at nine.’

And it’s suddenly so _unbearably_ him: a crooked brittle grin, sinewy limbs and a sharp suit, and something so clashingly _homely_ about it all.

Aziraphale is thrown off balance for an embarrassingly substantial moment. ‘Tomorrow?’ he manages eventually.

‘We’re rather getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?’ Crowley says drily, and for an odd brief moment he sounds genuinely, curiously irritated. It dies away as quickly as it has appeared. ‘I’ve got work. You kiss the books goodbye. Write an ode on the ducks. Whatever. See you tomorrow.’

He’s gone in a blink, taking all the crisp refreshing air with him. The doors click shut and relaunch the perfect dusty stillness typically cosying up inside the bookshop.

Suddenly, unreasonably, Aziraphale feels nervous. It’s hardly a welcome feeling.

 

...

 

The more he thinks about this visit in the day that follows—and he _doesn_ _’t_ , really, what a nonsensical idea: he’s much too concerned with the urgent and delicate matters he still needs to tend to before his departure. There’s an undated inscription inside the back cover of his newest-oldest Torah for instance, and some nimble craftsmanship needed with the stuck pages of his Germanic hymns. There’s an unfinished pile of accountancy. And he’s _determined_ to use up his supply of cocoa, it would be a simply dreadful thing to let go to waste.

It all _requires_ attention.

But nevertheless, the more he _doesn_ _’_ _t think_ about that visit, the more aware he becomes of some profound hidden glitch in the way it has unfolded. There’s a sequence, so annoyingly familiar, to involuntarily replay: doors swinging open with a low whine, light lithe steps coming up, somewhat atypical venue of (possibly?) apologising. Or doing something _else_ , Aziraphale isn’t entirely sure if Crowley has had anything to apologise for.

All of this has happened before, more or less the same way.

Still, something has been off about it. Aziraphale can’t place it. He still doesn’t let himself acknowledge that he’s even trying to.

(Even though, frankly, there’s never any harm in the search for appropriate category for something, is there?)

 

...

 

The next day is a Wednesday and Crowley is late, which is _off_ as well: he tends to show up unnervingly on-time, ostentatiously negligent with it, draped dramatically across his car and complaining aloud about Aziraphale’s terrible tardiness.

Still, he is late _now_. Minutely so, but it still somehow manages to send Aziraphale’s into a state of huffy exasperation. He spends a good ten minutes murdering the dust speckling his newest Dr Faustus, and even goes as far as to pretend that he doesn’t see Crowley loitering on the curb when the demon actually arrives.

When he finally gets out, having procured a tweed jacket and muttering something about customers, Crowley merely smiles.

‘Come on,’ he chirps, unperturbed. ‘I’ve found a brilliant place.’

Crowley’s brilliant place turns out to be a startlingly modern, Crowley-ish French breakfast nook near Covent Garden. It’s white, sparsely furnished and rather hopelessly obnoxious, but the food is admittedly delicious: from _pain perdu_ to a surprisingly welcome glass of champagne.

And still, none of these dizzying little details manages to surpass Crowley himself. He behaves, Aziraphale firmly decides, in a manner utterly incomprehensible: wavering rapidly between being acutely hostile and urgently cordial, and vehemently insisting on paying for the whole thing afterwards.

‘My dear, don’t be ridiculous,’ Aziraphale says calmly, reaching for the bill tucked into a white leather case. 

Empathically, Crowley pushes his hand away and pats it down onto the table, with a sound of discontent at the back of his throat. The gesture is very odd, and makes Aziraphale feel even more dizzy—to the point where he swiftly miracles the champagne out of his system.

The feeling doesn’t subside. It’s mostly, if not entirely, _confusion_ —because Crowley doesn’t _do_ the touching, not quite.

(No: Crowley is always just a bit more stand-offish than necessary, which _could_ be attributed to maintaining an air of alluring mystery, but which Aziraphale has learned to perceive as an act of self-preservation. Professional detachment, so to say. 

One time, one inexcusable Bordeaux-hazed time, Aziraphale had forgotten himself and asked, ‘how d’you even tempt them? Earthly pleasures and such some, how d’you do it? I can’t-can’t imagine you … you doin’ _that_. Can’t imagine you bein’ all—all clingy and forward an’ stuff—’ 

‘ _That_ _’ssss_ none,’ Crowley then said, voice endearingly hissy with alcohol and movements heavily softened as he groped for the bottle, ‘of your damn _bussssiness_ , angel.’

Then he smiled and started talking, quickly, incoherently, and Aziraphale remembers thinking, _or do you just do_ this _and they simply surrender? Are you like that, just like that, always? I wouldn_ _’_ _t blame them._

He avoids the memory fiercely for a couple of decades before he manages to blame it on the wine.)

Presently, Aziraphale experiences a palpable need to say something, but Crowley beats him to it.

He remarks, in a terrifyingly sober tone, ‘You’re not going to escape the doubt, if that’s what you think. That doesn’t go away. Take it from me.’

There’s a moment of stunned silence.

Then, feeling rather ruffled, Aziraphale retorts, ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ 

 _You couldn_ _’_ _t have guessed that. You don_ _’_ _t know that_ _’_ _s so. I don_ _’_ _t know if I_ _’_ _m doubting, let alone—_

Crowley studies him for a moment. Then he sighs, ‘Sure, have it your way. Let’s do some more pretending, how about that?’

He suddenly cracks a grin, ‘We’re good at that. Pretending we know what we’re doing. Back to the Armageddon, ha … and quite off topic, this champagne is one _bastard_ of an overprice, if you ask me.’

For a moment, Aziraphale is torn between fiercely wanting to renegotiate the paying of the bill and uttering some icy variation on the theme of, _‘_ _We_ _’_ _re not exactly of the same stock either, are we? Doubt may be natural for you, but_ _—’_

But somehow, this old sentiment makes Aziraphale feel something in the way of nauseous, so what actually comes tumbling out of his mouth is an uncomfortable,

‘I’m not … I’m not ditching all this, you know. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with it. I’ll just be … er, focusing on something different for a while, something a little … beyond. So to say. We’re all entitled to change, that’s only _fair_. I’m sure you—’

Crowley cringes, as though Aziraphale has said something insulting, and the angel falls silent. Inexplicably, he feels ashamed. _He’_ _s done nothing to deserve this. Neither of us have._

‘Since when do you do _justifications_?’ Crowley says in distaste, shaking his head. ‘Come on, get it over with. It is how it is, we’re not going back from here. _’_

‘Except that I am,’ Aziraphale points out conscientiously, sniffling. ‘Technically, I mean, it’s not a new field …’

Crowley rolls his eyes so pointedly that it somehow transcends his glasses.

‘They’re all just going to cry out of joy when they get you, they are,’ he says drily. ‘A bloody delight, you keep up this pedantic air and you’ll outrank Gabriel. Look, Aziraphale—an escape is an escape is what I’m saying—so let’s _ditch_ beating around the bush, yeah?’ 

Aziraphale stiffens, oddly stung. ‘I rather hoped you’d be … more civil about this.’

The sheer ridiculousness of what he’s said strikes Aziraphale forcefully the very moment Crowley freezes mid-fishing out his credit card, eyebrows raised, surrounded picturesquely by the empty expensive plates and a drained champagne bottle.

The burning feeling of shame returns, stronger this time. _Something beyond, indeed. As though I was ever the one going for the noble thing._

‘ _Civil_?’ Crowley repeats, incredulously. He gestures at the still unpaid bill. ‘And this is what, barbaric? Excuse me if I—’

‘No, I …’ Aziraphale fumbles. ‘No. I’m sorry, I—oh, Crowley, I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean it that way.’ 

Crowley’s eyebrows rise up just a bit more, but resumes the card-swiping.

‘We’re going out tomorrow,’ he says abruptly, without looking up. ‘Late. Wear something nice.’

The burning feeling returns, though shaped a little differently. And it would take much more to normalise and dismiss it—even for Aziraphale.

 

...

 

It was supposed to be a _nothing special_ but it’s very clearly not, and it makes Aziraphale feel awfully breathless.

(Crowley was waiting in front of the theatre, oddly without the Bentley, oddly without movement. Standing in the soft yellow light pooling from a lamppost, head tipped forward, eyes hidden and fixed down, wearing a dark coat and snakeskin shoes, with his hands tucked into the pockets, swaying slightly on his heels.

And Aziraphale almost said it, then and there: _bugger it all, I don_ _’_ _t want any of it. I just want—_  

But of course, he didn’t.)

It’s a premiere—and a closed sighting, too—and they’re sat in a solitary velvet-lined alcove as the libretto unfolds. It’s an exquisite performance, and Aziraphale barely even _listens_.

Instead, he fixates on some miserable string of memories in which something along the lines of this has already happened: awfully thoughtful mutual gestures, each time just _by chance_ , each time written off as a coincidence. Undeliberate effort—and Aziraphale is only now realising that the very idea is a paradox. He’s not sure whether he has company in this realisation, or whether he’s simply _very late_ to realise it.

Crowley is still wearing his gloves and he hasn’t loosened the scarf wrapped around his long neck an inch. He sits unmoving, apparently listening in rapt silence. It feels wrong and deliberate as well, like he really _is_ trying to make it easier for Aziraphale, even while they wind up with the exact opposite. 

Like there exists a right in the universe for such things to happen.

 _There should_ , Aziraphale thinks helplessly, staring at the stage and focusing only on the blurry unreachable imprint of Crowley’s presence in the eye’s corner; telling himself not to check if he’s still there every five seconds.

Which is ridiculous. Crowley is _not_ the one who’s leaving. 

Somewhere in the middle of the third act, Crowley removes his glasses, sighing quietly. Aziraphale forces himself not to look.

 

...

 

They rush out of the theatre before the rest of the audience. It’s raining: a thick, ubiquitous drizzle of a nocturnal city, with light slanting off the droplets and moulding into almost-shapes. Everything seems to twitch and vibrate around them.

Aziraphale is dazed. 

Crowley catches his elbow with a firm gloved hand, oddly warm through all the layers of clothing, and tugs firmly away from the street.

‘Dying’s not on the menu today, angel,’ he says, sounding distracted. Numbly, Aziraphale lets himself be pulled to a different spot on the glistening pavement, where Crowley comes to a halt and releases his arm. 

‘Cold as hell,’ he mutters, in the same almost incoherent voice, fumbling for something in the pockets of his coat. Small droplets of water are clinging to his upturned collar, and his hair is damp, falling out of the usual precise symmetry and onto the forehead.

He suddenly looks up with a wan smile. ‘I would know.’ 

Aziraphale doesn’t answer. He is not, in this particular moment, actually _able_ to. 

The possibly worst thing about Crowley’s sunglasses, among countless others, might just be how easily Aziraphale has gotten used to them. Seamlessly, they’ve become an intrinsic part of Crowley’s general physique—to the point where it’s startling, to say the least, to see him without them. A rare, dangerous thing. 

It’s just some mediocre opera in London, Aziraphale argues with himself, it’s just a damn cold drizzle, Crowley looking urgent and fragile in this trembling light. Those strange eyes, wet hair and a thin, boyish face, oddly solemn. _Almost holy_ , Aziraphale would say if he dared say it. He settles for trying to fight the picture from crawling somewhere permanent in his memory. _It_ _’_ _s just_ _…_ _this. You. It_ _’_ _s too much._

‘Let me just … get us a cab,’ Crowley says meanwhile, sounding slightly erratic, and Aziraphale feels a swell of something so stifling that he can’t but look away.

‘I can’t imagine why on earth would you leave the car at home,’ he manages to say, unsteadily, eyes settling on a neon of a theatre across the street. A tall boy throws his jacket over a girl. The light around them is pink. There are no neon signs where Aziraphale is going.

He feels ridiculous. It’s all ridiculous. Nobody should feel like this, ever.

‘I just—uh, don’t know. For the aesthetic of it, maybe. The car’s been there for less than the opera and I just thought—’

The cab glides up to the wet pavement and whatever Crowley had meant to say is mercifully drowned out.

 

...

 

It’s not necessarily _easier_ inside the car, but it’s not strictly worse either.

It’s decisively peculiar, at any rate, to be sitting next to Crowley when the latter is not doing the driving. He’s clearly not used to it, either: whatever mysterious and unsettling composure he’s managed to maintain at the theatre, it’s gone now.

Crowley is pushed up into the remotest corner of his seat, one of his bony knees twitching up and down relentlessly, gloved fingers drumming against the leathery door. He’s staring out of the window, yellow eyes reflected hazily in the blurry glass.

By this point everything has become somewhat less unbearable, mainly because Aziraphale has managed to get a hold of the warm treacherous feeling inside him and constrain it with heroic stubbornness into the category of _nostalgia_.

It’s only when they roll into Mayfair that it strikes him how profoundly foolish he’s been to allow for _that_.

‘We’re—ah, going to your place, my dear?’ he blurts out without second thought and instantly cringes at the glaringly obvious implication.

Oh, it’s _one thing_ when it’s just a manner of expression in broad daylight, and suddenly a whole different animal when they’re squashed together on the leathery backseat of a small car, wet top to toe after getting out of the opera, with someone human and _thinking_ listening on.

Crowley doesn’t tear his eyes away from the window pane. ‘Uh—I don’t—I mean, I guess?’ he mutters. ‘You wanted to take the cab.’

His voice is distracted again, in this dissociative, shut-away manner that he has. He’s not making much sense.

‘No,’ Aziraphale corrects him staunchly, ‘you _wanted_ to, I merely—’

Crowley turns to face him somewhat abruptly, and Aziraphale instantly quietens. The demon’s face is pallid in the wan light, and the intensity of his expression betrays something of desperation.

‘What do you _want_ from me, Aziraphale?’ he almost-hisses, eyes skittering away in a flash. ‘You can—get out. Or whatever. I’ll pay for the cab to drive you back.’ 

Aziraphale makes an enormous effort to restrain himself from pulling the back of Crowley’s hand up to his lips and kissing it. He says, ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Tradition is tradition.’

Tradition has never led Aziraphale past the porch of Crowley’s flat before, but he prefers not to dwell on this.

And anyway, Crowley doesn’t seem to register the answer.

 

...

 

There’s some fumbling with the lock: Crowley mutters something wretched and miracles it open.

Aziraphale manages to stop fixating on the patch of smooth skin that pokes out from beneath the demon’s scarf for a moment, taken by the—somewhat surprising, and at the same time, _not at all_ —laconic showy ambience of the flat. He can’t help picturing Crowley hunched against one of the pristine white counters.

Again that awful thought: a bird, a blackbird with a broken wing, thrashing in the snow, looking angry.

He kicks the image away.

‘ _Be our guest, be our guest_ ,’ Crowley intones off-tune, in the parody of something Aziraphale doesn’t recognise. He saunters off into the kitchen, discarding the scarf and coat on the way, and disappears.

Aziraphale looks at the fluffy white carpet, then the expensive stereo, then the leather sofa, and feels helpless. He frowns at the lush, broad expanse of sleek green plants—Crowley seems to have gone a _tad_ carried away with his occult help for them.

Finally, his eyes settle on something vaguely familiar. ‘Oh, that’s just _indulgent,_ that is. A gramophone, Crowley, really—’

‘Beware,’ comes a muffled voice from the kitchen, ‘the wretched thing’s picked up by now.’

‘Picked up what?’ Aziraphale asks curiously, flicking the soundbox gently. A long crack, and then _La Boheme_ starts jauntily mid-opus. The angel watches the vinyl turn for a brief moment, pondering morosely on the duration of Liszt’s second _Hungarian Rhapsody_. He dares not think about Elgar.

He nearly gives a start when Crowley speaks out, somewhere inches behind him.

‘Funny,’ the demon is saying, voice muffled, a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc tucked under his arm. ‘It doesn’t listen to me anymore. S’always bloody _mama_ , _life has just begun_ and _I don_ _’_ _t wanna die_ over and over again lately.’

He chants that last part in a weary sort of dejectedly mocking voice. His eyes are still uncovered, and slightly more glazed than before. He looks tired.

Aziraphale studies him with a touch of worry. ‘That’s a curious sentiment, Crowley, for somebody of your kind—’

Crowley sobers up. ‘That’s a _song_ ,’ he says, nettled.

‘The tongue ever turns to the aching tooth,’ Aziraphale retorts with a tsk.

To his immense relief, Crowley does smile.

 

...

 

They end up watching a film. The plot might be a smidge too tacky for Aziraphale’s taste but the wine is decent, _sweet_ , and there’s Crowley at hand, sprawled haphazardly on the couch in a way that would look unflattering on anyone else. His head is thrown back, hooded eyes fixed on the screen, line of his throat blatantly exposed without all the safe scarf to cover it. He seems to be on the verge of giving in and falling asleep.

Aziraphale considers asking him whether he’s warm and maybe offering a blanket, and promptly feels ridiculous.

And before he can cover up the feeling with some awful remark, Crowley speaks out, sullenly, ‘What are you even going to _do_ there?’

He looks troubled.

Aziraphale wants to respond with some appropriate and snotty evasion to fit the general theme of the issue, but can’t. Staring helplessly at his own hands, he manages, ‘I don’t really know.’

Crowley doesn’t respond, and Aziraphale imagines all of the hinted meaning of this silence until it grows excessive, and he shoots the demon a surreptitious glance.

He’s asleep. Still sprawled on the opposite side of the couch, with his mouth open and eyes closed. After an unbearably long while, Aziraphale forces himself to look away. He stands up silently and miracles his trench coat back on.

By some another miracle, he refrains from kissing Crowley’s forehead as he passes.

He doesn’t say goodbye. He leaves a note but then thinks it out of existence. 

It’s still raining outside. Aziraphale shivers. _If this is the only way I_ _’_ _m able to walk out on you_ , _does it make it excusable?_

 

...

 

At four in the morning, the light is wan and lilac-grey, bringing out a peculiarly frail side of every shape, there are first persistent birds hovering the drowsy London, and Aziraphale is _not_ in Heaven.

And there is no half-doing, or undoing it this time, is there? No backing away. It’s either all going to hell, or … well, Aziraphale, _going to hell_.  

 _Well, darn it_ , Aziraphale thinks resolutely, gazing up at the bright façade and drawn curtains.  Then he inhales, pushes at the heavy door and hurries up the marble staircase with immense, nervous audacity. He only loses his nerve _after_ banging on Crowley’s door. 

There’s a moment of terrible, terrible silence.

But then there’s a muffled sound and Crowley opens the door: tousled hair, a white bathrobe and yellow eyes, and Aziraphale thinks dazedly, _well, no hope_ _’_ _s lost yet._

For a second, Crowley seems startled. His eyes narrow slightly, lips move and not a sound comes out. Then he composes himself somewhat.

‘What are you doing here?’ he snaps. 

_Ah. There it goes._

‘I was tremendously wrong,’ Aziraphale proclaims gravely, wringing his hands in the air and feeling unbearably flustered.

‘Yeah?’ Crowley says suspiciously, eyes wary. ‘Did you say something about the fascinating collection on human heresy you keep stashed in a mouldy burrow in Soho, s’that why they’ve kicked you out?’

He _is_ looking hostile now, very tense and very vulnerable, and this time Aziraphale has nothing left to lose.

‘Actually,’ says Aziraphale, in a terrible, matter-of-fact voice which vehemently doesn’t betray too much emotion— _well, it would do no good to scare the poor boy away first thing, would it_ , ‘I just missed you.’

Then he catches the lapels of Crowley’s bathrobe and brings him down for a kiss.

Crowley makes a noise, something surprised and muffled, and leans involuntarily forward, eyes falling closed with a flutter.

Other than that, however, he hardly does ... anything. He lets himself be kissed. He also lets himself be released and then opens his eyes wide, looking cryptic. He exhales audibly through his nose.

Aziraphale waits for the verdict with a sort of hyper-cumulated frustrated impatience; he _might_ have misinterpreted all of the signs, sure, but he has spent millennia forcing himself _not_ to interpret them, one after another, _and did it work? Did it change anything? Hell, no it didn_ _’_ _t, and—_

‘So I told them to, ahem, kindly bugger off,’ he finds himself clarifying, feeling properly dazed now. Crowley has tasted of wine and … well, _Crowley_. It is a bit more than Aziraphale has intended to learn at such an early stage. 

He waits a second more, then blurts out, ‘If that’s alright with you, that is.’

There’s another moment of silence and Aziraphale almost loses his spirit. _So much for not scaring him away._

Then Crowley moves. To call what he does a hug would be a big euphemism: it’s a crushing, heartfelt thing, and oddly warm, as Crowley’s lanky limbs and familiar-smelling skin come in close contact. He pushes his face into the crook of Aziraphale’s neck.

Very cautiously, as though not to break something, Aziraphale returns the embrace. 

The curtains inside the flat are drawn, the light that sneaks in too soft and muffled to be uncomfortable. It’s warm and drowsy.

A small splinter of heaven.

‘You’re such a goddamned idiot sometimes, Aziraphale,’ Crowley mutters, breath ghosting against Aziraphale’s neck as he tightens the embrace, sending a proper shiver down the angel’s spine. ‘You’re just so … bloody obtuse, you are.’

‘Point taken, my dear,’ Aziraphale says, and closes the door firmly behind them.


	2. Crowley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Perhaps he is still dreaming. He must be. He can’t bloody breathe._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The accidental, possibly gratuitous, Crowley-centred second chapter. All thanks to the readers ❤️

 

 

 _the knives in the kitchen are singing_  
_for blood, but we are the crossroads, my little outlaw,_  
_and this is the map of my heart, the landscape_  
_after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is_  
_a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me_  
_tight, it's getting cold_

 _ _—__ Richard Siken _, Snow and Dirty Rain_

 

…

 

He wakes up bleary and confused: limbs heavy, head fuzzy with a ubiquitous mild ache—the sort he’d get after a night of vivid feverish dreaming. For a moment, he lies inert and tangled in his sheets, cold fabric versus cold skin, trying to pluck his thoughts out of the void. Light pokes out dimly from behind the drawn curtains. The air is stuffy, overused. His white bathrobe is flung carelessly on a stark chair by the window.

And there is the question: what _has_ happened after he’s woken up, numb-bodied in the corner of his sofa and dragged himself limply across the flat? He tries in vain to conjure a genuine recollection, but instead a swarm of vivid splinters of his almost palpable, intensely physical dream come rushing in an unexpected flurry— _skin against_ _skin_ , _hands and movement_ _—_

He tenses up. This has never come so far. 

Then again, it has never come as far as Aziraphale actually _leaving_ him, either.

Or, not _him_. Earth. Aziraphale leaving Earth. He tries to wrap his head around it; fails. This has never come so far, and it has never been _supposed_ to. 

He shuts his eyes with a terrible weight in his chest. He can see it: the whole pitiful endeavour of trying to _keep_ the angel where he can still be reached. Such selfishness in it all, which should be good. Such desperation, which is not good at all.

Nauseous, Crowley sits up, marvelling why would he think it a good idea to discard his clothes and crawl into bed completely starkers. He’s cold, colder than usually, which is _very much_. He must’ve been too drunk and desolate to spare a conscious _thought_ , because in no way in Hell has that been a thought-through decision on his— 

A loud, startling noise comes rumbling from the kitchen.

Crowley freezes, hyper-alert. Too many close-calls and run-ins with varyingly despicable layers of Hell, too many near-discorporations to be able to stifle the panic welling up instantly in the chest. He’s not used to being caught this vulnerable.

Frantically, he scans the stark surroundings for a weapon.

But somewhere in the peripheries of his fuzzy mind, a tingling thought tugs on  the consciousness—something doesn’t add up, _spectacularly_ , as though he’s managed to omit something substantial, somehow slept through something very—

The door flings open with a glare of unexpected light; Aziraphale’s tousled head pokes in.

‘Dear me, I’m _sorry_ ,’ he blurts out apologetically, distinctly out of breath, sprinkled richly with something white and powdery. ‘I’m afraid I’m rather … rusty in this, ah, department. Considerably so. Actually, my dear, I’m also afraid I managed to break your coffee express—the shiny black thing, I suppose that _was_ a coffee express, at least. And, well, it hardly gets much _worse_ than that, does it? To come into a man’s house and break the … Then again, it didn’t look used in the slightest, Crowley, so it really wasn’t _much_ of a coffee express if it broke upon first use … One would think _this_ should be the one thing easily accessible in early morning, the amount of caffeine that humans tend to consume daily—’ 

Upon Crowley’s stupendously stunned silence, he draws a merciful pause and throws in, ‘Oh, and _hello_. Slept well?’

Twitchy, titillating realisation fills Crowley, seeping bit by bit into the blood and coiling within the chest—an inflating, all-consuming sensation of sudden warmth, almost an _ache_ of it, tingling as it spreads with nerve endings and he should _say_ something—

‘I don’t know,’ he manages dumbly, voice hoarse and oddly high-pitched, ‘I kind of … _liked_ that coffee express.’

Aziraphale makes a vaguely annoyed noise. ‘Oh, you _wou_ _ld_ say that _,_ ’ he says irritably, apparently having already forgotten that he was at fault at any point. Then he adds, voice bright—even if laced with some faint, barely recognisable note of something nervous, but Crowley is too paralysed to dissect it. ‘Anyway. You’re _awake_ , and not a moment too soon. Come up to the kitchen, dear boy.’

Without another word, he disappears into the no longer shocking brightness on the other side of the door, and Crowley stares after it until the edges blur into a splotchy phosphenes.

He listens to his own forcibly rhythmic breathing tuned to a hammering heart. It doesn’t much help: there’s a humming in his ears and this blasted unfamiliar warm sensation _everywhere_. He feels intoxicated.

All the painstaking years spent thinking and hoping and killing hopes, and _God_ , fruition taking place in his own reality seems almost too much to grasp.

 

…

 

By the time Crowley saunters into the unnervingly bright kitchen, wrapped carefully in his bathrobe and still largely shocked, he’s already driven himself half-sick with nerves.

_Yes, alright, so this happened. Question is, what happens next?_

The odd appearance of his own kitchen with the addition Aziraphale in it, however, manage to shun the feeling quite properly in favour of surprise.

The sight is _unusual_ , dizzyingly so: day to day, the angel tends to wear layers on layers of varyingly beige tweeds and wool, and a pair of somewhat gratuitous reading glasses. Right now, it’s a white cotton T-shirt and and pyjama pants that he’s sporting, wavy hair in utter disarray. He moves around the—newly cluttered and somehow _sticky_ —kitchen with amicable confidence, _talking_ , visibly at ease. 

Crowley finds _himself_ sitting at the edge of one of his chairs, frozen. It’s like he has stumbled into some alien plane of reality ready to dissolve upon touch. The air is thick with pancake batter. Sweet. Warm. Glenn Miller’s _In the Mood_ oozes languidly out of an old radio that he doesn’t remember owning. The coffee express looks, well, _broken_. Perhaps he is still dreaming. He must be. He can’t bloody _breathe_.

Aziraphale has turned on his heel, washcloth in hand, mid-sentence. A stray curl of greying blonde hair is falling onto his forehead.  ‘… what do _you_ say, blackcurrant _or_ lingonberry? Personally, I firmly reckon—’

Crowley tries in vain to inhale, push himself into thinking, movement, _any-bloody-thing_ , but the words refuse to formulate and he is left stuck, rigid in his chair. He thinks a panicked thought, _Am I ruining this already?_  

‘Right,’ Aziraphale then says, firmly, wiping his hands on the washcloth and flinging it deftly across his shoulder. ‘First things first, then.’

Then he walks up, cradles the sides of Crowley’s face in his hands, and kisses him.

Quite fortunately, Crowley’s body takes matters in hands and clicks into automatic response without the dubious aid of the brain. He draws in a breath and turns up his face. His hands fly up and settle precariously on Aziraphale’s waist, long fingers splaying on the warm cotton. Part of the tension from his chest relents.

After a while, Aziraphale moves away, hands planted on Crowley’s shoulders. There is something in his eyes that Crowley does not dare name yet. _Not yet_. _Perhaps not ever._

‘Coffee?’ the angel asks, stunningly matter-of-fact. His expression turns sheepish almost instantaneously. ‘Er. Not from the express, though. Once again, _apologies_.’

Crowley breathes out through his nose.

‘Yeah,’ he mutters, with a brittle smile. ‘Why not. Coffee sss' _alright_.’ 

A couple of increasingly more breathable minutes later, Aziraphale proudly presents him with a cup of something black and sharp-scented that Crowley only now realises he doesn’t really tend to drink. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, really. 

(Except that Aziraphale is very clearly _not_ in Heaven as he settles on the chair opposite of Crowley’s and begins smothering his pancake with jam— _lingonberry or blackcurrant_ , Crowley has no idea—which _does_.)

‘I’m going to Hell,’ Crowley blurts out abruptly, putting down his cup with a sickening crash.

No ominous cloud manifests itself to bring in a slither of unease. The chirpy music doesn’t falter, and neither does Aziraphale.

‘Lord works in mysterious ways,’ he says instead, stoically, continuing to smear the jam; and then almost causes Crowley to choke by throwing in an innocuous, ‘Then again, I _really_ don’t recall you doing anything quite _so_ scandalous for them to take you away this instant. At least, _so far_.’

There’s a long moment of silence in which Crowley finds himself momentarily unable to think.

Then he snorts into his coffee, helplessly, caught between being flustered and annoyed, and something else entirely. ‘Did you,’ he manages to choke out, ‘did you really just _say_ that?’ 

Aziraphale is watching him with something dangerously like a smirk playing in one corner of his mouth. He muses, ‘You’d think six millennia is enough for the element of surprise to wear off.’ 

 _How not to love you_ , Crowley thinks dazedly, almost high on his coffee.

‘Angel,’ he says instead, in something like amazement. ‘ _Goddamn_ it.’

Aziraphale smiles slightly wider, treating himself to some pancake. There are small crinkles around his eyes. ‘Nice to see you smile for a change.’

‘And vice versa,’ Crowley retorts, then inhales sharply. The sneaky, familiar weight returns, settling in the ribcage, stymieing everything else. ‘But I meant it. I’m going to Hell. Today.’ 

 _Ah, there it is: the shadow_.

Aziraphale’s eyes, gone suddenly grave, are almost too much to directly look at. _Almost_.

Quietly, the angel says, ‘I see. Have I been too late?’ 

‘No, I …’ Crowley almost stutters, unbearably warm again. He’s not used to this, he’s not used to putting it all in words, this enormous messy thing that has lived inside him for ages. Not to Aziraphale’s face. Not at all. ‘No. I’m _coming bac_ k.’

Aziraphale doesn’t move. ‘Yes?’

And he doesn’t look flippant anymore. No; there’s way too much apprehension and guilt in his eyes, and Crowley fiercely wants to shun it away, banish it, because neither of them should get to feel guilty for this. 

Instead, he closes his eyes, braces himself, and makes an effort to explain, ‘I just. I needed something—something to _do_. In case you wouldn’t … if you went to Heaven, and didn’t come back, which was the _more_ likely turn of events. So, yeah. I needed  … I needed a distraction. Sleeping half a century would’ve been bit too tempting if I didn’t have anything. So … well. There’s that.’

Talking, as it turns out, comes relatively  _easy_ when hasty and spontaneous. Significantly more trouble lies in managing to look the other person in the eyes while doing so. So far, Crowley can’t seem to bring himself to the latter, so he stares so intently at the silver coffee pot that its contents run cold. 

Another shock interrupts him: Aziraphale’s hand finds his among the jars and plates and cups, warm and curiously physical. Once again, it’s _surprising_ , more than anything, and once again, something inside Crowley’s chest flares up with a flutter.

‘Eat up, then,’ Aziraphale says, voice crisp, ‘that's not the kind of place you'd like to be late to, I fear.’

 

…

 

He dresses meticulously, dawdling; fixes his cufflinks and straightens the suit three times before gathering enough willpower to abandon the place in front of the mirror that he’s become glued to. His eyes seem ridiculously yellow in the dim light, but he can’t locate his sunglasses. He keeps trying to hear the small noises from outside his room.

‘ _Right_ ,’ Crowley whispers to his solemn reflection, ‘enough is enough. Get out of here.’ 

Aziraphale’s eyes skim down his body in one smooth lingering glance and then snap up sharply. He gives him a nondescript, vaguely mischievous half-smile, and Crowley swallows. The idea is to hold off any response until he can process it, he tells himself. The idea is to survive all this with heart and mind more or less intact.

‘Lead the way,’ he manages, offering a vague gesture towards the door. He holds his breath all the way down the sunlit white staircase, oddly morbid in its stark brightness, to the car. He keeps holding it as he drives, among the ubiquitous noise of a very particular Queen song, which is stuck on a relentless loop, and which he’d prefer not to be hearing right now.

_Not right now. Not until this doesn’t turn out to be something in the way of a very deliberate practical joke._

Aziraphale is back to being clad in his tweeds and glasses, and, having procured some shabby book out of thin air, assumes his default setting of an absent-minded scholarly reverie. Crowley tries not to fixate on assessing how much of it is put on for show.

He fixates on the _big fat traitor_ that Freddie Mercury has proved to be, instead.

The Bentley rolls smoothly into Soho and almost takes him by surprise. Wordlessly, and feeling acutely unnerved, Crowley halts on the curb and stares ahead of himself, into the blinding sunlight scattered across the narrow street. ‘I, uhm. We’re here.’

There’s a moment of silence. _Say something_ , Crowley thinks desperately. _No, don’t say anything, shut up_ , his mind immediately counters.

‘When you’re done,’ Aziraphale suddenly speaks up, voice unnaturally clear. ‘Come home. Come _around_ , I mean. Er, to the … bookshop.’

There’s another pause. ‘If you’d like, that is,’ he adds, more quietly, an echo of the previous day.

 _Home_ , repeat the delirious whispers in Crowley’s mind, sending him spiralling further into a daze. _Home_.

Unable to muster up enough courage to speak, he nods curtly. Then, just as the angel is beginning to get out, a frantic impulse seizes him—he catches Aziraphale’s left hand and presses a hasty, almost urgent, kiss to its back.

Aziraphale stares at him for a moment, his eyes bright with something unnameable. Then says, sounding slightly choked, ‘Good luck.’

Crowley counts the excruciating seconds before the bookshop’s doors slam shut, and then tries to breathe again. It doesn’t work; the air is suffocating. Or perhaps it’s just his racing heart, bit too much oxygenated blood. He’s not used to it.

 _I ain’t ready_ , spills shrilly from the Blaupunkt.

‘I sure as _Hell_ ain’t,’ Crowley says aloud, somewhat shrilly as well.

 

…

 

Hell is a nightmare, but that should probably go without saying.

Crowley manages to almost forget not only Aziraphale, but the entire fact that either of them are independent beings capable of will and action by the time he comes crawling back out onto Earth.

It’s dark already; a damp piercingly cold Autumn night with elusive eerie light slanting off shifty shapes. He staggers almost blindly to his car—a vague angular object in the twilight, nothing more—and sags against it, knees weak, sick to the stomach. He’s lost his gloves somewhere along with the glasses, and the cold wet metal seems to burn his hands.

It’s not that Hell’s become any _more_ of a nightmare than it’s used to be, he thinks dully. It’s more that Crowley’s threshold of tolerance seems to have begun skinny-dipping somewhere right after the Armageddon and is currently becoming nonexistent.

He manages to compose himself enough to level his breathing and then slink into his car, shutting the door behind him. He’s slowly losing the traces of the vaguely bloody stench that has been causing nausea all his way back. He feels a little steadier.

Perhaps it’s not _that_ hopeless. Perhaps it’s just the … timing. 

Crowley turns the key and allows the wipers to assume a soothing, rhythmic pace. He sinks deep into his seat and closes his eyes. The rain is tapping dully against the windows. _Yeah, timing wasn’t ideal._

The past week has been the coldest week of Crowley’s life. It perhaps shouldn’t have been. No, scratch that: _it shouldn’t have been._ The end of the world, successful or not, delayed or not,  _should_ have felt colder.

Swallowing, Crowley considers the possibility that the Universe simply wants to communicate something to him: something rather unpleasant. By trying try to take away his Earth. By trying to take away—

 _Aziraphale_ , Crowley thinks, somehow managing to feel both exhausted and outraged. _They tried to take away_ Aziraphale _. Take that goddamned library into account, and that makes it bloody twice. Unthinkable._  

So maybe that’s it: the Universe, giving Crowley the finger, as it tends to do. Maybe that’s it.

Wrapped up in the vague, dim feeling of being so tired that cold becomes warm and tense becomes drowsy, he dozes off to the intertwining sounds of the rain and wipers.

 

…

_Aziraphale is standing on his porch._

_His plan didn’t really work out, but then again, his plans very rarely do. It all flashes before him: just another week of pointless, useless hinting. Little conniving strategies of restrained calls for help. Hear me. Hear me. You can’t hear me._

_Didn’t work out._

_Still, it’s dawn, and Aziraphale is standing on his porch._

_There’s a lot to consider in what follows, a lot to catalogue: Aziraphale, saying something breathless. Aziraphale, urgent and impatient and nervous. Crowley, pushed up against his own wall. Kissing. Some mumbled words, inconsequential. Stumbling clumsy backwards steps, also inconsequential. Laughter. This muffled light on a threshold with being simple darkness. Aziraphale’s voice murmured against his neck._ _Aziraphale,_ _walking_ _him_ _backwards_ _to his_ _own_ _bed_ _, toppling_ _them both down_ _onto the mattress._

 _Then hazy movement, a feather-light kiss to his exposed sternum under the tugged-away bathrobe, hands traveling blindly, lips chasing lips. Soft hair under his fingers. A breathy,_ Crowley _._

 

…

 

He wakes up stiffened from cold on his driver’s seat. Too lazy to actually move, he stares blearily at the Blaupunkt and thinks up a litany of things that should be said.

_I tried to tell you, and I don’t know if you understood, but, well—here it is. I’m incapable of standing the thought of your absence. I can’t move from that spot. It’s a dead-end, you’re gone and I would be gone as well. It’s all the same burning bookshop, and I’m always inside shouting your name. Please don’t leave me. I hate to ask you that. But please don’t. It’s been too long to tell if I’m not projecting, but I don’t care. Can I hope? For you, being somewhere, feeling the same lack. Am I allowed to pray? I think I have been praying for some time now—_

He will not say any of those things, Crowley acknowledges drowsily, eyes falling back shut. He’s not there yet. He’s not sure if he ever will be.

But a question, then _: how much time do I get buy before you realise I’m too much to take?_

There’s a startling noise of knuckles rapping against the glass, and Crowley is startled awake once again. A concerned-looking parking warden peers inside the Bentley as he gingerly rolls down the window inviting a sprinkle of shockingly cold drizzle inside. 

‘Everything alright, sir?’ The man is about sixty, holds a paper coffee cup in his wrinkled hands, smiles wearily, if amicably. He looks quite used to working night shift. He doesn’t look very lonely.

‘Fine,’ Crowley says, voice raspy. ‘Just tired. Must’ve fallen asleep.’

He’s dreamt of Aziraphale. Of course he has.

‘Sir, I think you’d better go home,’ says the moustached warden, sympathetically. Crowley stares at him blankly for a long while, trying to place the glitch in how the situation unfolds, in the yellow light or the rain, before realising that he’s not wearing his sunglasses. Oddly enough, it doesn’t bother him. It doesn’t seem to bother the warden, either; perhaps he’s got poor eyesight. Perhaps he’s seen worse. 

‘Yeah,’ Crowley says weakly. ‘ _Home_.’

 _Coming home_ , he thinks. He sees it again, like a blinding, overwhelming phosphenes: Aziraphale, shuffling about his pristine white kitchen and wincing the consistency of the pancake batter. Fussy, outrageously out-of-date, terribly nitpicking. Messy. Irritable. Coming home, to _this_.

He tries to picture how it would feel. 

…

 

By the time his car crawls into Mayfair, Crowley is utterly cold. A hollow, ringing, piercingly cold silence is hanging everywhere around him. He dares not touch the Blaupunkt.

It’s also still raining, which is bloody _inconvenient_ , because it invites recollection. With a sigh, he closes his eyes and travels back in time: to a different rain tapping against the window of a cab after the opera, with Aziraphale’s wandering fingers brushing past his knee as he says mindless things that sound promising and tantalising without even meaning to; with Crowley staring at the glass and counting the seconds that build minutes, trying not to think.

More questions _. Or_ did _you mean it? Did you think about staying? Did you dither?_

The window on the third floor is dark. The white flat is empty. He’s left the bed unmade.

 _Does it still smell like you?_ Crowley thinks, and suddenly it becomes to much.

Almost sick with anticipation, hands trembling, he starts the ignition.

 

…

 

The dimly lit street is trembling in the rain and Crowley finds that he hates standing in front of closed doors. He hates it with a passion, with every fibre of his being, hates the irrevocable feeling like they will never open, and nobody will ever come out.

Then there is a muted noise, footsteps and some muffled talking, and all at once, he doesn’t hate doors all that much.

Aziraphale is standing there, outlined with dim light—looking slightly dishevelled in a woollen jumper, reading glasses down on the tip of his nose. Something inside Crowley leaps violently.

There is a tense, indefinite moment of silence before anything happens, and Crowley feels like he’s waiting for the world to start turning once again.

(And he _knows_ what look these eyes have, now. The same look Aziraphale has offered him after the opera: wide eyes full of such affection that everything else seems obliged to turn away. And still, this time, nothing does, not even Aziraphale himself.)

Finally, sounding strangled, Aziraphale says, ‘It’s you. You’re ... _Come in_.’

The bookshop is dry and slightly too warm, half-sunk in twilight and utterly messy. Crowley miracles himself dry, looking around in a daze. There are stacks of books piled up in random clutters across the floor and papers covered with slanted handwriting strewn across the desk.

Aziraphale fidgets. ‘I, ah, wasn’t … certain if I should expect you, my dear. It’s not what one would call _tidy,_ is it _._ But I do hope it’s forgivable—’

‘I came earlier,’ Crowley interrupts clumsily, and then catches himself, nerves settling in his stomach once again. ‘I mean—we didn’t arrange it. Sorry, I didn’t _think_. I should—’

(New arrangement, new and fragile, and he’s already managed to _violate_ it—) 

‘Nonsense,’ interrupts Aziraphale, moving to close the doors behind Crowley. ‘You’re not going anywhere. Get yourself comfortable, I’ll … I’ll open the wine.’

Crowley nods. He strays into the dimly lit backlot almost involuntarily, half-dizzied by nerves and half by sheer relief. It all makes a stark contrast for both the rigid weather outside and his pristine flat: lived-in, curiously homely, sunk in comforting shadow. Dust everywhere, ink stains on the pillows, wax on the wooden floor. A half-empty mug of cocoa. It’s white, has a pair of tiny wings on it. Crowley fixates on the detail involuntarily, holding his breath: after this entire past week, it feels bloody surreal. 

He descends onto the sagged couch with a brittle sigh. _Surreal_.

The feeling persists until Aziraphale returns with a Bordeaux tucked under his arm along with a jar of _cantuccini_ , carrying a tray of china and spilling both the bergamot flower-scented Earl Grey and a muttered but emphatic curse which he swiftly follows with, ‘pardon me.’

The angel sets everything on the table before listing all of the things he’d brought on one breath and then flopping onto the armchair opposite of Crowley.

Crowley doesn’t realise there’s a lump in his throat until the silence falls. He looks away, violently glad of the half-shadow around them.

‘So,’ Aziraphale meanwhile says, quietly. ‘How’s it been?’ 

‘It’s been—’ And suddenly, it _is_ too much, and he can’t speak at all. He’s swallowing back something humiliating, throat impossibly tight. He stares intently at his own left knee. ‘It’s been _hell_. Aziraphale. _It’sss_ been—ghh, I can’t _.’_

Channeling all the frail self-restraint he has into one last attempt to hold himself together, Crowley runs his cold hands across his face. ‘I _can’t_.’

Time stumbles and flutters, then: dizzyingly, Aziraphale is somehow there on the plush couch, taking him firmly by the wrists and tugging them away.

‘You,’ he says, and there it _is_ , this impossible warmth that Crowley is sure he must have at least half-conjured, ‘don’t _have_ to.’

Almost overwhelmed, Crowley pushes himself one more time, past a boundary he’s never thought he’d come to approaching. 

‘All this time,’ he says, voice hoarse, keeping his eyes fixed down, ‘I was just thinking about you. All this damn time. I keep thinking you’d be gone, and it drives me spare. I … I can’t think straight.’

There, he _said_ it. Felt surreal past his lips, for sure: flimsy and lacking as any words are, much less like his abandoned litany, much more like the countless jibes and evasions he’s employed in the past, hoping some of the feeling underneath would come through.

It’s a blind guess, but he hopes this time it has. Turning, laid bare, he lets his forehead fall forward to rest on Aziraphale’s shoulder, pliant and waiting. _This is it._

‘If you think,’ Aziraphale begins finally, ‘that _I_ was able to do anything else than think about _you_ —’ his voice catches.

‘How can I,’ Crowley whispers, ‘how can I _know_?’

Voice impossibly warm, Aziraphale says, ‘ _Crowley_.’

And then he laughs: suddenly, nervously, a breathy exhilarating sound that sends a shiver travelling all the way up Crowley’s spine. ‘ _Oh_ , you … let me rephrase, then: I’ve been _waiting_ for you. And, and you know what eternity is? You know what eternity is? I mean, _d’you know what eternity is?’_

Dizzy with warmth and relief, and quite unable to ward off a surprisingly welcome, involuntary grin, Crowley surfaces once again, face to face with the angel.

‘ _This_ , preferably,’ he says shortly, and then kisses Aziraphale right on the mouth. 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, the reviews are the Bentley to my Crowley <3


End file.
